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Summer Session 2010 – Phillips Academy Andover

English as a Second Language – Mr. Max Deardorff

Essay 2 – Lord of the Flies

Name: Ricardo L. Borges

Civilization and savagery: a fight inside of each one.

In the beginning of time, everything on earth was wild, every plant, every animal and

every man; and ruled by the wilder characteristics of human nature. In history, without an exact

date, but with a long process of transformation, men and women chose to live in society. Society

is not only a concept of a group of people living together, with similar characteristics; it is also

something that is beyond the humankind decisions, it is what governs the world where we live.

Once people decide to live as citizens, or rather, to live in civilization, order becomes an

essential tool. Without order, every single group of people living in a social organization in the

world would vanish. Since the moment people are born, they are included in this system of order

and have to learn how to live as civilized people; however, they still maintain the characteristics

of when the earth was wild, when their actions were administrated by the human instinct. These

qualities are inside of everyone. People are not used to demonstrate their wild side, but it is there,

just waiting for the appropriate moment to show up; and it does not happen only because we live

in an ordered world. Sometimes, people are in difficult conditions, when they expect good

things, but they only have bad times, so they go over the society’s policy, and in the end, it is all

about human nature. The writer, William Golding, saw close up, in the World War II, how men

could be savages. In a war environment, the concepts of life like order and civilization are just

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simple things that people leave in their homes. In his novel Lord of the Flies, Golding uses

symbolisms, like authority and disorder, or the common sense and the wild human nature, to

demonstrate the contrast between the civilization and the savagery, and how the humankind can

be naturally savage, only being civilized by society’s rules.

One example which shows the contrast between the savagery and the civilization is the

Conch, as a symbol of authority, and the head of a sow, also called The Lord of the Flies, as a

symbol of disorder. Right in the beginning of the story, the conch shows its power and

demonstrates that it is a symbol of civilization. It starts to make the reader think about the

position of the conch in the story being heard by all the kids in the island. At this time, the conch

“acts” as the voice of a crowd asking for their rights, for their conditions of citizens. Another

point that illustrates this civilized influence of the conch in the story is that the children could

only talk with the conch in their hands, “We’ll have to have hands up like at school… I’ll give

the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he is speaking,” therefore, it

demonstrates the conch was important to keep the meetings in order, and so this is a

representation of the civilization in the island (33). The conch also confirms it is a society and an

order symbolism when it changes in the same time as the people in the island change. When the

children start to show their wild nature side, when they start to be more savages, the conch also

presents some changes. The conch starts losing its power of ruling while the people start losing

their civilized side. This symbolism is an evidence of the transition between the society and the

savagery, the guys are becoming wild and the conch is becoming less influential on their actions.

In the end of the story when the savagery becomes uncontrollable, Piggy, the character that

represents the knowledge, dies and the conch is destroyed. It is one of the most important

participation of the conch in the story, which is, ironically, its end. This is the end of the society

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and the victory of the savagery. In contrast of the conch’s civilized image, The Lord of the Flies

symbolizes the savagery. It appears in the story when the children are getting lost in their own

insanity, when they are starting to show how savage men can be without the society’s rules.

Their fear of a beast which doesn’t even exist makes them create The Lord of the Flies as an

offer. They are not thinking as they used to think before, they are not civilized as they were, The

Lord of the Flies is changing their behavior, is making their conduct worse. The sow’s head also

represents the evil. The evil inside of everyone, that shows up when the wild human nature

“speaks” louder. When the immoral character of The Lord of the Flies acts in the story, the peak

that characterizes the end of civilization happens: Simon’s murder. These two examples make

the “fight” obvious between civility and savagery, and they help to support Golding’s ideals

about society.

Ralph and Piggy represent the maintenance of civility in Lord of the Flies, so they “fight”

against Jack and Roger, the representatives of wild human nature and the lost of order. Besides

the use of objects, like the conch and the sow’s head, for showing the symbolism present in the

novel, Golding uses characters to make sure that there is a contrast between order and savagery

in his story. First, there are Ralph and Piggy, as the guardians of the concepts of social life, such

as common sense and knowledge. One thing that is clear in Piggy and Ralph’s personalities is

the friendship. They both care about the feelings of the others and by doing this, they keep the

group united as much as they can. In the beginning of the story Ralph is chosen to be the chief,

which shows he is an able person, able to lead, able to bring the order to the group. Those

characteristics are strongly related to the civility, because one thing which is needed to live in

civilization is order. Piggy is the character whom denotes the ideals of knowledge, intelligence;

and with this, he helps Ralph to produce an ordered crowd. He is like the prime minister of a

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parliament, the vice president of a company, which means he is the person who has the ideas, but

does not become much known by those ideas. The most important thing that shows they are

symbols of civility is that they first cared about going back to the idea which they represent in

the novel: the civilization. They are the ones of the few people in the island who were thinking

about being rescued and going back home, which shows they still have a connection with the

world they left behind. On the other side, there are Jack and Roger, as the wild side of human

nature. Not even the wild side, but they also represent the evil face of the group. They are

naturally corrupted inside themselves; they already have a strong savage character in their souls.

The first thing that happens in the story which indicates Jack was becoming a symbol of

savagery is when the reader discovers he has a knife. If people think about the simple meaning of

the story, the small knife does not mean a thing, but thinking about the more complex ideas, the

knife is something that makes him different from the others, makes him wilder than the others.

Roger, in the same way as Jack, has a transformation during the novel. Even if he had a

complicated personality since the beginning, he becomes worse throughout the story, and in the

end, by murdering Piggy, he kills the knowledge and shows he was its enemy, the enemy of

civilization. Both Ralph and Jack have an important role in Lord of the Flies, their leadership

influence the acts of other children, Ralph taking them to the civilized side and Jack, to the

savage side; they represent the divergence between the progress and the primitive.

As another evidence of the Golding’s symbolism is the signal fire, which they made to

be rescued, representing the civilization and in opposite to the fire, appears the hunt as a symbol

of uncivilized people. Instead of keeping the fire burning, the savagery shows up through the

desire of the jack’s group of only hunting. The fire can be considered something that represents

the civility because it was their only hope for being rescued; the only thing that keeps them

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believing they, one day, will be safe at home and life is going to be as nice as it was before. If

any boat passed near the island, they had to keep the fire burning so that people from the boat

would see the smoke. Without the fire, they could be stuck in the island for the rest of their lives,

which could probably do not be a long time. The fire is also something that requires attention,

requires organization from the children. Once they have to make a schedule for keeping the fire

burning, they need to be organized and it keeps them in a civilized background. The fire also

denotes a relation with the hopeless. The fire is their light in the end of the tunnel. On the

opposite side of the signal fire, the hunting stands for the savagery. At the first moments they

make the fire, when the Jack’s group is taking care about it, they go hunt and forget about the

fire. It dies and they miss the chance of being rescued, they miss the chance of coming back to

the society. The hunting, besides taking their attention off the main thing in the island, which is

being rescued, brings out their wild feelings, such as the desire of killing, of running away

without any order, the desire to “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” (152). In the end

of the story, ironically, the positions change. Because of the hunting, they make the fire, which

saves them after the whole thing. The fire burns everything in the island and transforms it in a

hell of smoke. It all starts when Jack decides to kill Ralph. One day the hunters went out to hunt

and Ralph was the game. To find him they burn the entire island and the smoke calls a boat

attention. Finally they got rescued by the hunting and the hunting fire, but the fire still burns

everything. Two wild ideas, fire and hunting, things that exist since the man is known as man,

mean very different things. First the fire, the light of the island, is being their chance of being

rescued, then the hunting, weakening up the wildest part of the children’s personalities; and not

even only them, but any human being. Contrasting those examples we can clearly see the

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different meanings on Golding’s symbols, where he is telling the reader how people can show

their savage side, instead of living normally as in as ordered society.

By using examples like the Conch or The Lord of the Flies, Golding illustrates there are

in the novel some examples of how men can be socialized but can also be controlled by the

wilder side which is inside of each one, waiting for any weakness in the civilization’s rules to

overpower people’s behavior. Unfortunately, the evilness of the majority influences the good

minority. In Lord of the Flies the reader can see the influence that Jack makes in the other’s ways

of acting. The novel also presents some items; such as people’s personalities like Ralph and

Jack’s leaderships, or even more abstract symbolisms such as the power of the fire and the blind

desire for hunting that Jack’s group presents. With those examples, which are clearly seen in the

story, the reader can surely understand the contrast the author makes, constructing a more

interesting book, between savagery and civilization. The reader can also see how evil people are

in their daily life, where the ambition is like a veil that follows men; or that envy and intolerance

are more common than they imagine. Finally, people have to choose between living in a dream

world where everything is nice or face the hard, but real, surviving condition where without the

civilized rules of the society, good manners would vanish.